1. Field of the Invention
The invention lies in the field of conveying and further processing flexible, two-dimensional (flat) objects, in particular printed products. It relates to a device and to a method for taking over and further processing such objects, in particular printed products such as e.g. newspapers, magazines, brochures, catalogues, part-products of such printed products, or supplements, brochures, CDs.
2. Description of Related Art
The further processing of printed products is carried out at ever increasing speeds. Moreover, more and more complex products are put together of several part-products and processed. Both of these, the high speeds and the complexity of the products, require a very accurate control of the product position at each point in time of the processing.
A process which occurs very often is the so-called insertion: one or more part-products (also called pre-products) are inserted into a folded outer product (also called main product). The part-products to be inserted may be printed products or also other objects, e.g. supplements, brochures, CDs.
The folded main product, for example, is transferred by a gripper conveyor to an insertion system, e.g. an insertion drum or a revolving system, before the insertion procedure. The insertion system has several receiver units in the form of pockets. The main products with the folded edge in front are inserted into these and are braked at the pocket base, acting as an abutment. The main product is subsequently opened and the further objects are inserted into the opened main product.
Moreover, from the CH application No. 00788/08 which has no prior publication, it is known to leave the folded main product in the gripper and to support it on the fold edge and on the side surfaces by way of co-moved abutments and additional support elements during the insertion procedure, i.e. for as long as the gripper needs to be opened for the purpose or receiving the further product.
With the known devices, the feed direction regularly runs in a different direction than the further conveying by the receiver units. For transfer, the singularised objects must be transferred into the moved receiver units within a very short time. For this reason, little space and time is available for the actual transfer. The objects are led with one edge in front, through an opening of the receiver unit, into this. Thereby, the objects are often subjected to very large (negative) accelerations and are stopped by a part of a receiver unit and aligned thereon. This part lying in the movement path of the fed objects, against which the leading edge runs, is hereinafter indicated as an abutment. The sudden braking at the abutment may lead to the newly fed object rebounding from the abutment and bouncing back opposite to the feed direction. Thereby, it may be laterally dislocated. If it consists of several objects, these may also mutually dislocate and/or rotate. The braking at the abutment may also lead to a bending-up or a sagging of the object depending on the flexibility or stability of the object. As a whole, too strong of braking at the abutment leads to undesired inaccuracies with regard to the position of the object. These may lead to errors in the further processing chain and should therefore be avoided.